Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said in an all-hands letter today that the company plans to cut more than 18,000 jobs, according to the company's website. That's more than the 17,000 jobs reported earlier.
Jassi said the company intends to begin communicating with affected employees on January 18. Several teams are affected, he said, but most of the positions being cut are in our Amazon Store and PXT (People Experience and Technology Solutions) organization.
It would be the largest layoff by a US tech company during the current economic slowdown, but Amazon's workforce also far outstrips that of its Silicon Valley peers. The company had more than 1.5 million employees at the end of September, meaning the latest cuts will represent just over 1 percent of its workforce.
The following is the full text of the letter:
As I shared in November, in developing an annual plan for 2023, company leaders worked with their teams to look at headcount and where to invest in the future, focusing on what was most important to customers and for the long-term health of the company. This year's assessment is made more difficult by the uncertain economic outlook and our aggressive hiring in recent years. In November, we communicated the difficult decision to make redundancies in our terminal equipment and books businesses and to implement a voluntary severance programme for some staff in our People, Experience and Technology (PXT) division. I also indicated at the time that annual planning had not yet concluded and that further redundancies were expected in early 2023.
Today, I've decided to share the results of this further review -- we've taken the difficult decision to go ahead and reduce our workforce. Together with the job cuts announced today, we are planning to reduce our workforce by more than 18,000. There will be multiple teams affected, but the vast majority of the cuts will be in Amazon Stores and the PXT division.
My senior management team and I are well aware of the pain these layoffs cause. We do not take this decision lightly, nor do we underestimate the impact on the lives of those who have been laid off. We are working to support staff affected by the redundancies and offer a package including severance payments, transitional health insurance benefits and external employment support.
Typically, we wait to communicate these results until we can talk to employees who are directly affected. However, because one of our colleagues leaked the plan, we decided to release the news early so that we could communicate the details directly to you. We hope to begin communication with affected employees (or, in some parts of Europe, with employee representative bodies in accordance with regulations) from 18 January.
Amazon has weathered tough and unpredictable economic times before, and will do so again. These changes will help us pursue long-term opportunities with a better cost structure. However, we are also optimistic that during this time, when we are not hiring on a large scale or even being forced to lay off employees, we will be creative, agile and enterprising. Evergreen companies go through different phases and don't expand aggressively every year. In the context of developing new products and features, we often emphasize the leadership principle of "create and simplify." We will pursue this principle in all our businesses, but sometimes we lose sight of the importance of critical creation, problem solving, and simplification. It's all about figuring out what matters most to the customer (and the business), reorienting the company's resources and time allocation, and finding a way to deliver more services to the customer at a lower cost (and letting the customer enjoy the resulting savings). Both types of "creation and simplification" are important.
I want the employees affected by these layoffs to know how much we appreciate your contributions to Amazon and the work you do on behalf of our customers. You have made a meaningful impact on the lives of many clients. For those of you who continue to travel with us, I look forward to working with you to continue to make life better and more convenient for our customers every day, and to keep inventing things to do so.
Andy
Responsible Editor: Yu Jian SF069
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